Devlog 41 - More Demo Polish

Published: July 22, 2022

I took a week off last week to -- among other things -- enter GMTK Game Jam 2022, with our dice-rolling cooking game "Dice it Up", made in 48 hours:


So uh, go check that out if you'd like! :D

As for Rhythm Quest...I'm very close to having a demo build that I'm ready to show off to the public! I've already done some internal testing and have just been working to tidy up little things here and there.

Calibration UI Tweaks

One thing that came up during testing is multiple people not quite understanding the intended usage of the calibration UI and tapping every 4th beat instead of on every beat:


I've added some circular pulsing indicators here in an attempt to hopefully make that more intuitive. I also replaced the "line" markers with circles, just felt like it looked like a better animation to lay down a circle. It's a little busy for my tastes now (maybe I'm overcompensating...) but I can always iterate more on this later:


As an extra fallback, I end up accepting the calibration now even if you only use one of the 4 reference points, as long as you do it enough times.

More Settings Menus

I've been continuing to clean up some of the settings menus even more...for example, I've added a new submenu for configuring haptic feedback (vibration/rumble), which shows only for mobile and switch (I haven't found gamepad rumble to feel very good):


Gamepad Tutorial

Gamepad has been supported as an input method for a long time, but I've only recently gotten around to making the separate tutorial dialogs for it:


I haven't tested it yet, but this should also in theory detect if you're using a Dualshock controller or Switch Pro controller and show the appropriate icons instead. Unfortunately the last dialog here is currently a lie as I don't allow gamepad rebinding yet...(more trouble than it's currently worth to implement...)

Audio Cue Rework

A long time ago I added an audio cue system that allows visually-impaired persons to play Rhythm Quest. This has been pretty half-baked for a while, and I felt bad having only a janky single on/off toggle in the "Accessibility" menu, so I went and gave it some more attention:


I'm sure this system could still be refined more -- for instance, it might be better to have volume / panning configurable on a per-cue basis rather than globally -- but for now you can at least change the global cue volume balance and select from a wide selection (19!) different cue sounds ranging from short arpeggios and pitch slides to percussive hits. I haven't played around with these much yet so I have no idea how well they work, but it's certainly more versatile than before.

Backdrops and Screenshots

I've added some more variety in the menu backdrops as well, rather than just using the level 1-1 set for everything:


Aaand I've taken some new screenshots for the "end of demo" popup, showcasing the new mechanics that I've developed for the full game (which weren't implemented at the time that I previously took screenshots):


Other Stuff...

I've done a bunch of other miscellaneous work as well:


Overall things are looking very good and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm able to get this out in the next week or two!

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